Drug Abuse & Addiction

Objectives:

1. To introduce drug abuse and addiction as topics in psychological science

2. To show that drug taking is a behavior shared by people and nonhuman animals, one that can be studied rigorously with laboratory animal models

3. To discuss concepts pertinent to drug taking: reinforcement, decision making, psychosocial factors, brain reward circuitry

Cognitive: Psychologists have obtained good evident that environmental cues play an important role in maintaining an addictive behavior. They also study the role of executive functioning in drug addiction (e.g., decision making, impulsivity, and so on).

Learning: Rewards, or “reinforcers,” increase the behaviors they follow. Psychologists are interested in whether drugs function as reinforcers in much the same way as do other reinforcers (e.g., food, water, money).

Neuroscience: Using diverse methods with people and laboratory animals, psychologists study which parts of the brain make up the “reward circuit,” and what chemical messengers in the brain are associated with the reward circuitry. Dopamine, for instance, is a neurochemical that appears to be important to drug-taking behavior.

Sociocultural: Psychologists also are interested in how social situations and cultural factors influence drug taking. Question include: How do social interactions influence drug taking? How does society contribute to the drug taking culture? What are the perceptions of drug addiction on the whole: A disease, behavioral dysfunction, character flaw, or moral failure?

Related Readings

Scientific American articles– “Sobering Shift,” April 2004– “The Addicted Brain,” March 2004– “Beating Abuse,” January 2002

Online resource:National Institute on Drug Abuse online,

at http://www.nida.nih.gov/